Little, Brown signs Donna Tartt

The publisher will release the American writer’s new book, The Goldfinch, in October 2013. UK and Commonwealth rights for the book were signed from Gill Coleridge at Rogers, Coleridge and White, working in conjunction with Amanda Urban at ICM in New York.

Ursula Mackenzie, Little, Brown UK c.e.o. said: “We are incredibly proud that Little, Brown will publish Donna Tartt‘s extraordinary new novel. Her books are genuinely global publishing events , and working in conjunction with Little, Brown New York we have the capacity to reach a huge international audience for this wonderful book.”

Tartt’s previous novels, 1992’s The Secret History and 2002’s The Little Friend were published by Penguin and Bloomsbury. Little, Brown in New York announced it had signed the novel last week.

The book is described as a “haunted odyssey through present-day America”, following a young boy in New York called Theo Drecker who survives an explosion which kills his mother and is drawn into the city’s artistic underworld.

Richard Beswick, publishing director of Little, Brown and Abacus said: “Donna Tartt is one of the finest novelists working anywhere in the world today, and she tells a story like no one else in a way that no one else would tell it. The Goldfinch takes us back to some of the pure pleasures of reading—with a total emotional investment in the fate of a hero, and the absolute need to know what happens next—and makes of them something thrilling and new. It is also a book of profound intelligence and sophistication which compellingly raises the biggest of moral questions.